Am i the only one that sees the massive problems with this ?
>But with the new basic school reform all children will also learn via periods looking at broader topics, such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland’s independence ...
>The concept of “phenomenon-based” teaching – a move away from “subjects” and towards inter-disciplinary topics – will have a central place in the new NCF.
>The answer is that educators in Finland think, quite correctly, that schools should teach what young people need in their lives rather than try to bring national test scores back to where they were.
I'm all for teaching with current-time examples, but making them the central point ? Teaching children "what they need in their lives" (the what) instead of the how ?
Well they have money so i guess a general education is not that important for them.
Real life consists of interdisciplinary subjects and requires interdisciplinary learning. What's the value of picking things apart and studying "science" and "math" and "literature" in isolation?
In the world around us, these subjects are intricately tangled together. Awareness of the relationships between these subjects makes the world interesting and is one mark of a well-educated person. Isn't it impressive and fascinating when someone can speak on the co-evolution of math and science, or the impact of literature on history?
In my experience, interdisciplinary study offers an abundance of opportunities to get at "the how," whereas single-subject study prioritizes "the what."
Literature has not much to do with science, but a bit with history (depends though on if you count social sciences as science, but even then art is art). Math is a pure.. topic, although it is very much used in all other education.
Note that in my country there is no "science" topic, but physics, biology, geology, etc.
> Isn't it impressive and fascinating when someone can speak on the co-evolution of math and science, or the impact of literature on history?
Most certainly, but that is not what the linked article suggests will happen. The article is a bit more on the pragmatic side (the current world state). I, myself, would very much love for a physics teacher to talk about how completely new mathematics was invented when Newton or Maxwell were faced with the problem of expressing physics in mathematics (we did for Newton in my school, as i'm sure many other schools do the same for many other similar examples). Physics and math are very much related, but do you abolish pure mathematics in favor of only biased topics (towards spacial and forces in the context of physics, statistics in the context of some social topic, and such)?
When you look at it, how many things are actually interdisciplinary ? Sure many things are (arguably everything), but how many do you think need their own.. class ?
Climate change is covered by geology. Community (whatever that means) i didn't cover much in school because i went to a technical school, but i'm sure my sister did (although i remember that there was, but i don't remember what topic it was under).
Things were never pure to begin with, but why go into the other extreme ?
I'm sorry. But even though i think that some things in education should be changed, this change is, to me, just moronic. (if it is as the article says, that is)
>But with the new basic school reform all children will also learn via periods looking at broader topics, such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland’s independence ...
>The concept of “phenomenon-based” teaching – a move away from “subjects” and towards inter-disciplinary topics – will have a central place in the new NCF.
>The answer is that educators in Finland think, quite correctly, that schools should teach what young people need in their lives rather than try to bring national test scores back to where they were.
I'm all for teaching with current-time examples, but making them the central point ? Teaching children "what they need in their lives" (the what) instead of the how ?
Well they have money so i guess a general education is not that important for them.